Yale Journal of Law & Feminism
Volume 5
Issue 1 Yale Journal of Law & Feminism
Article 7
1992
The Need for Contextual ReVision: Mercy Otis
Warren, A Case in Point
Janis L. McDonald
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The Need for Contextual ReVision:
Mercy Otis Warren,
A Case in Point
Janis L. McDonaldt
No final resting place soothes my spirit quite as well as the Old Pilgrim
Burial Ground on the craggy hills overlooking Plymouth Bay in "the
Massachusetts," surely one of the loveliest sites for a cemetery in the entire
country. At its apex, Mercy Otis Warren's grave lies hidden behind an
imposing edifice built in modern times to commemorate her husband, General
James Warren, who is described on the stone as "Scholar, Patriot, General of
the American Revolution." Directly behind this ornate tribute to her husband
is the original plain white stone they shared. Her inscription reads, "Mercy
Warren, born 1728 died 1814. Wife of James Warren, Daughter of James Otis,
Sister of James Otis, Jr."
No reference appears to her role as mother of five sons, or historian of
three volumes on the American Revolution; no mention either of her role as
an active player in the radical patriot efforts which created the committees of
correspondence and which culminated in the American Revolution; no word
of her as a political satirist, or published poet, or political advisor to the
founding fathers, or fierce advocate of a bill of rights; no recognition evident
of her role as mentor, friend, and correspondent with other women and men
throughout the colonies.
The lessons I have learned from this woman have prompted me to rethink
the way traditional and feminist historiographies assess women's contributions.
My struggle to take Mercy Otis Warren seriously led me to believe that
feminist historians fall into some of the same traps sprung by traditional
historical treatments of women and, unfortunately, create new barriers to a
t Visiting Associate Professor of Law, Syracuse University College of Law. This article was
presented in an earlier form as part of the Mitchell Lecture Program on Women's Legal History at SUNY
Buffalo on March 21, 1992. I would like to thank all of the people who created that series, particularly
Lucinda Finley and Isabel Marcus, for giving me a chance to develop this piece. The other speakers at
the conference (Taunya Lovell Banks, Ellen DuBois, Lea Vander Velde, Reva Siegel, and Mary Becker)
were instrumental in encouraging me to publish this work and offered insightful comments in reaction to
my presentation.
This work is part of a larger effort to study the contribution of Mercy Otis Warren. She has been my
instructor, speaking as a voice from the past that refuses to be silenced until we get it right. My research
on her contributions is part of a soon-to-be-completed dissertation at Yale Law School and a book on her
work. My dissertation committee-Bruce Ackerman, Akhil Amar, and Nancy Cott-continue to provide
encouragement and advice on this endeavor. I would also like to thank my research assistants Deborah Diaz
and Donald Abraham for their support on this project. I appreciate the support of the faculty of Syracuse
University College of Law, who provided a summer grant for this effort.
Copyright 0 1992 by the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism
Yale Journal of Law and Feminism
[Vol. 5: 183
comprehensive understanding of the contributions of some women in our past.
As feminist theory takes great leaps forward in unravelling our foundational
assumptions across disciplines, the work of writing history must reflect a new
dimension in the way we assess the past. This new dimension requires that
modern historiographers step back and take another look at their own efforts
to interpret women's history.
Reexamination will reveal a tendency to discount particular contributions
because women of the past failed to recognize what modern feminists would
define as their own oppression. It will require a reassessment of the
dependence on traditional philosophical, political, religious, social, and moral
assumptions used in evaluating the context and work of a preceding era.
If, for example, ideas of individual responsibility are assessed in the
context of traditional understandings of the basic precepts of "Liberal
Individualism" 1 or "Classical Republicanism," 2 does this encourage a neglect
of the different ways an 18th-century American woman might have thought
about individuals and their responsibilities? Does being true to the context in
which women developed their ideas mean accepting the traditional portrait of
how those ideas are shaped and managed? By depending on traditional
assumptions, historians may distort ideas expressed by women of a different
age, failing to take these women and their ideas seriously.
My journey in rediscovering the life and work of Mercy Otis Warren led
me down an unexpected path. Because I had no clue who she was when I
began my search for women who had opinions about the newly proposed
United States Constitution in 1787, I unwittingly bypassed both traditional and
feminist assessments of her work until I had "discovered" her for myself. The
contrast between the exciting ideas suggested by my reading of her work and
the reluctance of most historians to probe deeply into the thought of Mercy
Otis Warren forced me to think about her history in its larger context.
By using Mercy Otis Warren as an example, and by offering my own
process of rediscovering her ideas as a contrast to other historical treatments
1. According to one scholar,
Though liberal individualism is only one strain of liberal thought, it has, since the seventeenth
century, roughly from Hobbes on, been a dominant one in Anglo-American political thinking.
Liberal individualism accords the individual not only ontological and epistemological priority,
but moral priority as well .... As human beings, individuals require the freedom and security
to pursue their lives unhindered. Hence the term "liberal individualism."
ADRIAN OLDFIELD, CITIZENSHIP AND COMMUNITY: CIvIC REPUBLICANISM AND THE MODERN WORLD
1-2 (1990).
2. Classical republicanism has received increasing attention as scholars have reconsidered the
intellectual origins of the American political tradition. For an understanding of the ideas of republicanism
and the interpretation of its role in 18th-century America, see BERNARD BAILYN, IDEOLOGICAL ORIGINS
OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (1967); J.G. POCOCK, THE MACHIAVELLIAN MOMENT: FLORENTINE
POLITICAL THOUGHT AND THE ATLANTIC REPUBLIC TRADITION (1975); CAROLINE ROBBINS, THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY COMMONWEALTHMAN (1959); GORDON S. WOOD, THE CREATION OF THE
AMERICAN REPUBLIC, 1776-1787 (1969). As a result of this work, legal scholars have attempted to apply
ideas of republicanism, with its myriad definitions, to a revival and/or critique of republicanism as applied
to the modem era. See generally Symposium, The Republican Civic Tradition, 97 YALE L.J. 1493 (1988).
Contextual ReVision
1992]
of her work, this article identifies deficiencies in both traditional and feminist
historiographies. I also describe important aspects of a new stage of feminist
historiography that builds on our evolving appreciation of feminist analysis.
This new stage seeks to understand the contexts within which women of the
past lived their lives and articulated their thoughts. It acknowledges that these
women lived during particular periods in history but vigorously reexamines
each period in light of new insights about the ideas, events, and women of that
era.
I.
BLISSFUL IGNORANCE?
I started with an assumption that there had to have been women who
expressed opinions about the United States Constitution when first proposed.
I appreciated the difficulty of discovering the modes of expression used by
women to articulate their opinions during that age. I began my task willing to
search for these opinions in diaries, letters, pamphlets, learned treatises, or
other forms of expression.
The first day of my random search in the Boston Public Library led me
to focus on Mercy Otis Warren. She seemed to be cited primarily as the
recipient of letters from famous men of the era.3 I looked her up in a
biographical dictionary4 and soon found myself in the Rare Book Room with
one of the only extant copies of her pamphlet opposing the proposed
constitution, written in 1788 during the ratification debates.'
Next I discovered her letterbook, known to historians, containing her own
handwritten copies of letters she had written. 6 After schooling myself in her
3. See generally BAILYN, supra note 2, at 7, 29, 64 n.8, 102 n.5, 157; WOOD, supra note 2, at 48,
538, 570. Although Cecilia Kenyon, in her influential book on the Antifederalists, commences her
introduction with a quote from Mercy Otis Warren, she does not attempt to discuss Warren's contribution.
CECILIA KENYON, THE ANTIFEDERALISTS xxi (1985). See also JACKSON TURNER MAIN, THE ANTIFEDERALISTS, CRITICS OF THE CONSTITUTION, 1781-1788, at 114, 140, 169, 186, 235, 287 (1961). In
Kenyon's initial essay on this topic, the understandable reliance on the predominance of male contributors
to this political debate is particularly evident. Cecilia Kenyon, Men of Little Faith: The Anti-Federalists
on the Nature of Representative Government, 12 WM. & MARY Q. 3-43 (1955).
4. THE DICTIONARY OF NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY (Sir Leslie Stephen & Sir Sidney Lee eds., 1882).
5.
MERCY OTIS WARREN, OBSERVATIONS ON THE NEW CONSTITUTION AND FOEDERAL AND STATE
CONVENTIONS BY A COLUMBIAN PATRIOT, reprinted in PAMPHLETS ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED
STATES, 1787-88 (Paul Leicester Ford ed., 1986) (1892) [hereinafter WARREN, OBSERVATIONS]. A faded
newspaper article attached to that copy of the pamphlet reported in 1931 that Charles Warren, a professor
at Harvard University and Warren's direct descendant, had presented evidence to the Massachusetts
Historical Society establishing Mercy Warren as the author of the pamphlet. Charles Warren, Elbridge
Gerry, James Warren, Mercy Warren and the Ratification of the Federal Constitution in Massachusetts,
64 PROCEEDINGS OF THE MASSACHUSETrS HISTORICAL SOCIETY 143-164 (1932). Elbridge Gerry, who
served as a Massachusetts delegate to the Philadelphia Convention in 1787 where he subsequently refused
to sign the proposed Constitution, had received credit from earlier historians as the author. See, e.g.,
PAMPHLETS ON THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES, 1787-88, supra. Since Charles Warren's
presentation to the Massachusetts Historical Society, most historians attribute authorship of the pamphlet
to Mercy Otis Warren.
6. Mercy Otis Warren, Letterbook (Massachusetts Historical Society Mercy Warren Papers),
microformed on Mercy Otis Warren Papers (Massachusetts Historical Society) [hereinafter Letterbook].
All correspondence cited from the Letterbook is reprinted with the permission of the Massachusetts
186
Yale Journal of Law and Feminism
[Vol. 5:183
peculiar style of handwriting, I plunged into the task of deciphering over 500
pages of her letters to an incredible array of people.
My initial introduction to Mercy Otis Warren's work focused on her
original work rather than historiographical treatments. If one reads her work
in its entirety-including correspondence,7 poetry,' plays, 9 political
pamphlets, 0 and her History t-and takes the ideas expressed seriously,
Warren presents a vision for society that reflects concern for the individual as
well as for the direction of the society as a whole. Only after forming my early
impressions of her did I turn to the views of other scholars for information
about her and the political, legal, social, moral, and philosophical context of
her age. If I had begun my work on Mercy Otis Warren by analyzing
traditional historiography, early women's history, or feminist assessments of
her contribution, I would not have fully recognized elements of her vision that
require further analysis.
II. THE TRAPS OF TRADITIONAL HISTORIOGRAPHY
According to William Raymond Smith, American historiography up to the
mid 1950's "typically has taken the form of descriptive bibliography,
biography, study of sources, and comparison of the treatment of special
Historical Society. The Letterbook contains her handcopied correspondence with, among others, Abigail
and John Adams, Catharine Macaulay (a British historian writing at about the same time as Warren),
Samuel Adams, Henry Knox, James Otis, Martha Washington, Elbridge Gerry, Hannah Lincoln, and
Hannah Winthrop. She is also known to have corresponded with Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Rush,
Benjamin Franklin, and other leaders of the period. See, e.g., WARREN-ADAMS LETTERS 345-47
(Massachusetts Historical Society, ed., AMS Press 1972) (1925).
7. Although Mercy Otis Warren was a prolific writer, her correspondence has never been fully
collected for publication. In addition to the Letterbook of over five hundred pages, and other
correspondence included in the Massachusetts Historical Society Mercy Warren Papers, other
correspondence appears in THE ADAMS-JEFFERSON CORRESPONDENCE (Lester J. Cappon ed., 1959);
WARREN-ADAMS LETrERS, supra note 6; Correspondence Between John Adams and Mercy Warren, (JulyAugust 1807) in 4 COLLECTIONS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY, 5th Series, at 317-491
(1878); A STUDY IN DISSENT: THE WARREN-GERRY CORRESPONDENCE, 1776-1792 (C. Harvey Gardiner
ed., 1968).
8. MERCY OTIS WARREN, POEMS, DRAMATIC AND MISCELLANEOUS (Boston, 1790). This book of
poems was dedicated to President George Washington and includes two major tragedies, The Sack of Rome
and The Ladies of Castile, which contain political commentary aimed indirectly at the situation in
revolutionary America.
9. Boston's Puritan disdain for "things dramatic" prevented Warren's plays from ever being produced
on stage. Warren herself never attended a play, but she managed to write at least five well known satires
during her life. MERCY OTIS WARREN, THE ADULATEUR, A TRAGEDY, in THE MASSACHUSETTS SPY
(1772); MERCY OTIS WARREN, THE BLOCKHEADS: OR THE AFFRIGHTED OFFICERS, A FARCE, in BOSTON
GAZETTE (January 23, 1775); MERCY OTIS WARREN, THE DEFEAT, A PLAY, in BOSTON GAZETrE (1773);
MERCY OTIS WARREN, THE GROUP, A FARCE (1776) [hereinafter WARREN, THE GROUP]; MERCY OTIS
WARREN, THE MOTLEY ASSEMBLY, A FARCE (1788).
10. Only one political pamphlet is currently attributed to Mercy Otis Warren, entitled OBSERVATIONS
ON THE NEW CONsTITUrION AND FOEDERAL AND STATE CONVENTIONS BY A COLUMBIAN PATRIOT, supra
note 5.
11. 1-3 MERCY OTIS WARREN, HISTORY OF THE RISE, PROGRESS AND TERMINATION OF THE
AMERICAN REVOLrTION, INTERSPERSED wrri BIOGRAPHICAL, POLITICAL, AND MORAL OBSERVATIONS
(AMS Press 1970) (1805) [hereinafter WARREN, HISTORY].
19921
Contextual ReVision
problems."12 The problem with applying this approach to the study of
women's contribution, as one study asserts, is that "[h]istorians' neglect of
women has been a function of their ideas about historical significance. Their
categories and periodization have been masculine by definition, for they have
defined significance primarily by power, influence, and visible activity in the
world of political and economic affairs."" 3 Prioritizing certain types of
information and resources automatically limits consideration of that which is
excluded from these priorities.14 The assessment of ideas considered important
for historical purposes has placed emphasis on published books, monographs,
and political documents. Women have had little access to these forms of
expression, and their other forms of expression have received little or no
attention.
Additionally, women have often become the focus of historical attention
only in so far as their lives reveal information about important men. This
neglect is partly a consequence of the difficulty of obtaining sources about the
women themselves. As a result, their lives could only be explained in terms
of the men who surrounded them. They have also suffered from a prioritization
of male thought and action.
Traditional historiography relies on implicit or explicit assumptions about
the period of history under examination. As historians become influenced by
new theories of interpretation, they attack underlying assumptions of past
historiographical work. For example, as historians responded to evidence that
seventeenth-century intellectual ideas played a stronger role in the American
revolutionary period than had been previously understood, new modes of
investigation proliferated."5 Similarly, assumptions about the causes and
motivations of the American Civil War shifted dramatically in several
identifiable phases of historical work on the subject. 6
12. WILLAM RAYMOND SMITH, HISTORY As ARGUMENT: THREE PATRIOT HISTORIANS OF THE
AMERICAN REVOLUTION 17 (1966). Smith attempts to use histories published immediately after the
American Revolution as original, rather than secondary, sources, evidencing themes of the period. Id. at
20. He develops an approach to assessing how these historians, including Mercy Otis Warren, used history
"in their self-conscious attempt to build a city on a hill." Id.
13. Ann D. Gordon et al., The Problem of Women's History, in LIBERATING WOMEN'S HISTORY 75
(Bernice A. Carroll ed., 1976).
14. GERDA LERNER, THE CREATION OF PATRIARCHY 4 (1986). According to Lerner,
Until the most recent past ... historians have been men, and what they have recorded is what
men have done and experienced and found significant. They have called this History and claimed
Universality for it. What women have done and experienced has been left unrecorded, neglected,
and ignored in interpretation. Historical scholarship, up to the most recent past, has seen women
as marginal to the making of civilization and as unessential to those pursuits defined as having
historical significance.
Id.
15. As the results of J.G. Pocock's THE MACHIAVELLIAN MOMENT: FLORENTINE POLITICAL
THOUGHT AND THE ATLANTIC REPUBLIC TRADrrION, supra note 2; Bernard Bailyn's IDEOLOGICAL ORIGINS
OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, supra note 2; Caroline Robbins's THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
COMMONWEALTHMAN, supra note 2; and Gordon Wood's CREATION OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC, 17761787, supra note 2 filtered into the consciousness of modem historians, new work started to emerge that
challenged many of the previous assumptions of the past history of this period.
16. For a brief description of this transformation of historiographical bent on the American Civil War,
Yale Journal of Law and Feminism
[Vol. 5: 183
We have yet to feel the full influence of feminist theory on
historiography. 7 Traditional historical research has been influenced in myriad
ways by the unquestioned assumptions that are instrumental in assessing the
context of ideas emanating from the period during which Mercy Otis Warren
lived and worked. Some of these assumptions, if superimposed on an attempt
to understand the contributions of women of the period, may block any success
in understanding their contributions. 8
A. Valuing Women in History Only as They Relate to Men
Historians prior to the mid 1950's characterized Warren as "a lady with
an illustrious name," and her life received attention as it related to powerful
men in her close circle of family and friends. 19 She was born into the family
of a prominent citizen and politician of Barnstable, Massachusetts, and
traditional accounts of her early life are primarily descriptions of her father's
and brother's political successes and failures.20 Warren worshipped her older
brother and felt an enormous responsibility to carry on his work after his
death. 2 '
In contrast to the famous male Warrens, very little is known about
Warren's mother, Mary Allyne, except that historians duly note her direct
lineage back to Edward Dotey, a passenger on the Mayflower in 1620.22
Warren referred to her as a "woman of superior character."23
An 1896 biography of Warren's life provided the first sketches of her
background, yet the author, Alice Brown, admitted in her preface:
[t]here are few consecutive incidents, save the catalogue of births,
marriages, and deaths, to be gathered concerning the life of Mercy Otis
see Janis L. McDonald, The Republican Revival: Revolutionary Republicanism's Relevance for Charles
Sumner's Theory of Equality and Reconstruction, 38 BUFF. L. REV. 465, 467-69 (1990).
17. See discussion infra part III.
18. See discussion infra part II.C.
19. MICHAEL KRAUS, THE WRITING OF AMERICAN HISTORY 78 (1953).
20. John Adams attended the court argument made by James Otis, Jr. against the hated Writs of
Assistance in 1761 in Boston. He wrote of that speech, "American Independence was then and there born;
the seeds of patriots and heroes was then and there sown, to defend the vigorous youth ....
Then and
there was the first scene of the first act of opposition to the arbitrary claims of Great Britain." Letter from
John Adams to William Tudor (Mar. 29, 1817). Adams also characterized James Otis's political pamphlet,
A VINDICATION OF THE CONDUCT OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE PROVINCE OF
MASSACHUSETTS, as continuing "in solid substance, all that is found in the Declaration of Rights and
Wrongs issued by Congress in 1774, the Declaration of Independence in 1776, and the subsequent writings
of those political philosophers who upheld the national cause." Letter from John Adams to William Tudor
(Apr. 5, 1818). Otis's mercurial rise to leadership in the early stages of the movement leading to the
American Revolution intrigued historians all the more because he burned all of his papers prior to his lapse
into mental illness and eventual death after the Revolution. See also, Ferguson, Reason in Madness: The
Political Thought of James Otis, 36 WM. & MARY Q. 194 (1974).
21. Letter from Mercy Otis Warren to Catharine Macaulay (Graham) (June 9, 1773) in Letterbook,
supra note 6, at 1.
22. ALICE BROWN, MERCY WARREN 13 (Boston, Massachusetts Historical Society, 1896).
23. Id.
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Contextual ReVision
Warren. Therefore it seems necessary to regard her through those
picturesque events of the national welfare which touched her most
nearly, and of which she was a part.24
Despite her extraordinary access to Warren's unpublished correspondence,
Brown relies on biographies of famous men and contemporary portraits of mid
18th century American life to paint a picture of what life must have been like
for Mercy Warren. To her credit, she does publish many of Warren's letters
for the first time, although she is somewhat disdainful of those dealing with
substantive political thought. She wrote,
The most casual glance at the correspondence of Mercy Warren is
enough to send the mind fondly and appealingly in another direction
... . One feels like praying Mrs. Warren to chronicle her desire for
a "white Paduasoy," or her need of instruction about the "pig-killing."
No hope of that! [S]he is painfully abstract, and, so far as her
correspondence bears witness, she lived upon stilts. I
From Brown we learn that Warren received no formal education although
she received her education "second hand" from her brother's tutoring sessions
prior to his attendance at Harvard.26 She developed a close relationship with
this brother, James Otis, Jr., who shared his reactions to life at Harvard with
her. She became a voracious reader, borrowing his books whenever
possible.27
Her own generation delivered a more generous evaluation of her reputation.
John Adams wrote that he "had a feeling of inferiority" "whenever [he]
approached or addressed her. "28 He reported that her "attainments dwarf
those of most men."29 Thomas Jefferson ranked her a "genius."30
James
Bowdoin, one-time governor of Massachusetts, admitted to seeking her advice,
acclaiming her a "good judge in politics."31
The women of the subsequent generation recognized the contributions of
Mercy Otis Warren and praised her accordingly. Judith Sargent Murray
regarded her as an important guiding light.3 2 In her first letter to Warren in
1796, Murray spoke of her admiration for Warren's use of women as the main
24. Id. at vii.
25. Id. at 67.
26. Id. at 23.
27. Id. at 23-27.
28. Augusta Violett, Economic Feminism in American Literature Priorto 1848, 27 U. ME. BULL.
31 (Feb. 1925).
29. Id.
30. 10 THE WRrINGs OF THOMAS JEFFERSON 231-32 (A. A. Lipscomb and A.E. Bergh eds., 1903).
31. Letter from James Bowdoin to Mercy Warren (Mar. 23, 1776) in WARREN-ADAMS LETrERS,
1743-1777, supra note 6, at 216.
32. Letter from Mrs. Judith Sargent Murray to Mercy Warren (Mar. 4, 17%), in WARREN-ADAMS
LETTERS, supra note 6, at 328-29.
Yale Journal of Law and Feminism
[Vol. 5: 183
characters in her poetry:
I trace in that invaluable publication, amid the brilliant manifestations
of Genius so conspicuously displayed therein, unequivocal
demonstration of a mind fraught with a sufficient degree of candour,
and benevolence, to embolden a more humble Adventurer in the Career
of fame .
. .
. But, tracing thy splendid footsteps, the daughters of
Columbia become ambitious of some reflected ray, by which to point
the lengthening view .... 33
Sarah Wentworth Morton wrote an "Ode to Mrs. Warren by PhileniaConstantia" in the Massachusetts Magazine in 1790. 34 Warren definitely
provided a role model for some women who were aware of their status in
society.
But historians were more interested in what Warren could reveal about a
more important historical figure, John Adams. Warren maintained a special
relationship, usually manifested by lengthy correspondence, with John Adams
throughout her life. Adams considered his wife, Abigail Adams, and his
friend, Mercy Warren, to be exceptional women with whom he could discuss
politics and other matters of significance.35
In 1773, Adams encouraged Warren to write her history, advising
her:[mhe faithful historian delineates characters truly, let the censure
fall where it will. The public is so interested in public characters that
they have a right to know them, and it becomes the duty of every good
citizen who happens to be acquainted with them to communicate his
knowledge.36
Problems developed when Warren took him up on the challenge and wrote her
description of his character in her History: "a statesman of penetration and
ability; but his prejudices and his passions were sometimes too strong for his
sagacity and judgment."3 7 Adams, incensed by this rendition of his character,
commenced a battle by correspondence to redeem his place in history and put
Mercy Warren back in her rightful place.3" "History," according to an injured
33. Id. at 328.
34. Ode to Mrs. Warren by Philenia-Constantia[Sarah Wentworth Morton], MASSACHUSETTS
MAGAZINE 437 (July 1790), cited in Maud MacDonald Hutcheson, Mercy Warren, 1728-1814, 10 WM.
& MARY Q. 370, 378 (1953).
35. Letter from John Adams to James Warren, March 18, 1780, WARREN-ADAMS LETTERS, supra
note 6, at 131, cited in Lawrence J. Friedman and Arthur M. Shaffer, Mercy Otis Warren and the Politics
of HistoricalNationalism, 48 NEw ENG. Q. 194, 206 (June 1975).
36. Letter from John Adams to Mercy Otis Warren (Mar. 15, 1775), cited in Letter from Mercy Otis
Warrn to John Adams (July 16, 1807), in 4 COLLECTIONS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY,
supra note 7, at 329.
37. WARREN, HISTORY, supra note 11, at 392.
38. Adams wrote ten lengthy letters to Warren attempting to get her to change these "errors" in her
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Contextual ReVision
Adams, "was not the province of the Ladies."3 9
The correspondence between these two has been studied for what it revealed
about John Adams.' Because of this interest, Warren's letters in response
to Adams's criticisms have been published, but most of her other
correspondence remains unpublished.
B. Valuing ParticularForms of Expression and Participation
Traditional historiographical treatment of Warren's work measured that
component of her writing that intersected with the standard modes of male
expression of political, legal, and moral debate in the revolutionary era and
found her lacking. These historians made little effort to assess her overall
vision or contribution, ignoring the bulk of her correspondence and the ideas
expressed in her dramas and poems. They focused instead on the more
recognized vehicles for the dissemination of "important ideas": her History
of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution,41 and
because they contributed to a greater understanding of John Adams, on letters
Adams wrote to Mercy Warren.42
Evaluations of her History tended to denigrate the substantive import of
her work. One historian assessed the work as "wholly uncritical,"" and
another found it tainted by an anti-federalist slant.' Only one early historian,
next edition. Warren wrote six replies. These letters are excerpted in Correspondence Between John Adams
and Mercy Warren, supra note 7. Kraus devotes a total of almost two pages to Warren in which he adopts
"honest" John Adam's view that she should have concluded her history with the end of the American
Revolution and that history was "not the Province of the Ladies." KRAUS, supra note 19, at 79, citing
Letter from John Adams to Mercy Warren (Aug. 15, 1807), in 4 COLLECTIONS OF THE MASSACHUSETTS
HISTORICAL SoCIETY, supra note 7, at 463. Kraus decided that her treatments of the post-Constitution era
"were practically valueless as historical writing." KRAUS, supra note 19, at 79.
39. Letter from John Adams to Elbridge Gerry (Apr. 17, 1813), WARREN-ADAMS LETTERS, supra
note 6, at 380.
40. See, e.g., Kathryn Kish Sklar, American Female Historiansin Context 1770-1930, 3 FEMINIST
STUD. 171 (Fall 1975); DAVID VAN TASSEL, RECORDING AMERICA'S PAST: AN INTERPRETATION OF THE
DEVELOPMENT OF HISTORICAL STUDIES IN AMERICA, 1607-1884 42 (1960). In Sklar's treatment of
Warren's HISTORY, for example, most of the analysis is devoted to the quarrel between Adams and Warren.
41. WARREN, HISTORY, supra note 11. These historians often either ignore or disdain the second
part of her official title: INTERSPERSED WITH BIOGRAPHICAL, POLITICAL AND MORAL OBSERVATIONS.
According to THE LITERATURE OF AMERICAN HISTORY, the history "is certainly not conspicuous for
impartiality nor for a rigid historical method. The literary style of the book (published at the age of 77)
is not to be commended, being 'interspersed with biographical, political, and moral observations.'" THE
LITERATURE OF AMERICAN HISTORY 148 (J.N. Lamed ed., 1953).
42. CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN JOHN ADAMS AND MERCY WARREN (Chas. F. Adams, ed. Arno
Press 1972) (1878).
43. JOHN SPENCER BASSETT, THE MIDDLE GROUP OF AMERICAN HISTORIANS 23 (1917).
44. Hutcheson, supra note 34, at 379. In the only contemporaneous review known to exist of
Warren's HISTORY, appearing in THE PANOPLIST, Warren is said to have gone too far in some of her
descriptions of important men, "in some instances which a gentleman would not, perhaps, have thought
prudent." As if not satisfied with this barb, the reviewer continued, saying that we all "have our
'appropriate duties'... even 'aged women' have a sphere of usefulness.. . ." THE PANOPLIST 380-84,
429-32 (Jan.-Feb. 1807), cited in Lester H. Cohen, Foreword, in MERCY OTIS WARREN, HISTORY OF THE
RISE, PROGRESS AND TERMINATION OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION, INTERSPERSED WITH MORAL,
POLrICAL AND BIOGRAPHICAL OBSERVATIONS xxvi (Lester Cohen ed., Liberty Press 1988) (1805).
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Moses Coit Tyler, treated Warren as a serious historian. Tyler described
Warren as "an expert in the public transactions of the world in her day and
a penetrating judge of the characters of the men who had a principal share in
them. "5
More modern treatments of Warren's contributions focus again on a
traditionally defined role-albeit an unusual one for a woman in her era-the
role of Warren as historian.' This attention was part of a larger interest in
the role of the historians writing in the immediate aftermath of the
Revolutionary War. Warren's work as a revolutionary historian was contrasted
with the work of David Ramsay, of South Carolina,47 and John Marshall, of
48
Virginia.
Although Warren is the only one of these historians not accused of
plagiarizing significant portions of work from the Annual Register, a British
register of military records edited for a time by Edmund Burke,49 and
although her descriptions of events and people are deemed to be extraordinarily
accurate, somehow her historical achievement, according to traditional
historians, does not rise to the level of the others.50
Although there were some attempts to elucidate her philosophy, the limited
focus on her role as a historian excluded full consideration of her contribution.
Lester Cohen, who has written perhaps more than anyone on her views,
suggested that she had the most sophisticated understanding of the interplay
between ideology and ethics."'
45. 2 MOSES Corr TYLER, THE LITERARY HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 1763-1783 420
(1897).
46. For commentary on Warren's role as a historian, see Lester Cohen, Explaining the Revolution:
Ideology and Ethics in Mercy Otis Warren's Historical Theory, 37 WM. & MARY Q. 200 (Apr. 1980);
Cohen's introduction to WARREN,
HISTORY OF THE RISE, PROGRESS AND TERMINATION OF THE AMERICAN
REVOLUTION, supra note 44, at xvi-xxxi; Lester Cohen, Mercy Otis Warren, The Politicsof Languageand
the Aesthetics of Self, 35 AM. Q. 481 (1983); LESTER COHEN, THE REVOLUTIONARY HISTORIES (1980);
Friedman & Shaffer, supra note 35, at 194, 206; SMITH, supra note 12.
47. David Ramsay published several histories at about the same time as Warren's HISTORY, including
THE HISTORY OF THE REVOLUTION OF SOUTH-CAROLJNA FROM ABRIrISH PROVINCE TO AN INDEPENDENT
STATE (1809), and THE HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (1789).
48. JOHN MARSHALL, THE LIFE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON 1804-1807 (1834).
49. According to William Raymond Smith, "Attention paid to the early histories of the Revolution
during the last sixty years has concentrated on their plagiarism." SM TH, supra note 12, at 32. While
Mercy Otis Warren used the ANNUAL REGISTER as source material, she did not simply repeat information
from it as some of her contemporaries did. Id. at 38.
50. Friedman and Shaffer viewed her role as a historian as one similar to most others writing at that
time; she reflected an extreme patriotism toward the goals of the American Revolution and used that
patriotic theme in her history as a "staple of a new American nationalism," one which went far in fulfilling
"God's plan for mankind." Friedman & Shaffer, supra note 35, at 197, 206. They suggested that Warren
attempted to make the Americans "one people" by combining two themes: the special republican character
of the nation, and the special example America played in the world, as "an enviable example to all the
world, of peace, liberty, righteousness, and truth." Id. at 199 (citing 3 WARREN, HISTORY, supra note 11,
at 435).
51. Cohen has attempted to treat various aspects of Warren's work, including her use of republican
rhetoric. See Lester Cohen, Mercy Otis Warren: The Politicsof Language and the Aesthetics of Self, supra
note 46. For his commentary on her role as a historian see supra note 46.
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C. Valuing Male Assumptions
The traditional assumptions underlying political, ethical, social and
philosophical theories have recast women's words in the male terminology of
the age, foreclosing the possibility that women had something different in mind
as a result of their own perspectives and experience. Thus Warren's protests
against the weaknesses of the proposed constitution, when assessed at all, were
cast in traditional terms, relegating her to those unfortunates of history, the
Antifederalists. "Winner's history," as Charles Beard reminded us, 5 2 thus
assigned her a place on the losers side, adding another reason for her
invisibility.
But in a more pernicious way the assumptions of traditional political theory
served to mask or silence those ideas Warren offered that did not fit the mold
expected to contain her thoughts. Whether historians decided to evaluate ideas
in terms of definitions of "republicanism" or "liberalism" that prevailed at any
one period makes a difference in how women's thought of the time is assessed.
By classifying Warren's thought as typical of a particular category of
commonly understood ideas, which have traditionally been translated in terms
of assumptions about the framework of society and the role of individuals
within that society, commentators have foreclosed other avenues of
investigation.
When viewed in terms of the traditional views of the prevailing ideologies
of her times, Warren becomes a typical Antifederalist who objected to the
proposed United States Constitution in 1788 during the ratification
discourse." Her objections are explained in classical republican terms: a
concern that republics cannot work in a large geographic area, a concern about
the absence of Constitutional protections against government interference with
individuals, a fear that an aristocratic tyranny will gain control of the new
republic, and a concern that a government must be based on the private and
public virtue of the people.54
What happened in this analysis is that historians, when they looked at her
at all in this manner, sought out those key phrases they decided linked all
Antifederalists and failed to question whether her views differed in any
substantial ways. 5 In part, this is a common fate for all those designated as
Antifederalists, who suffered first from the "winner's history" phenomenon
mentioned earlier and also from the tendency, only recently being rectified,
to view the complicated sets of ideas represented by these people as containing
52. CHARLES BEARD, AN ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF TIE CONSTTrruTION OF THE UNITED STATES
(1913).
Cecelia Kenyon, Introduction: The Political Thought of the Antifederalists, in TIE
53.
ANTIFEDERALISTS, supra note 3, at xlix.
54. Id. (citing WARREN, HISTORY, supra note 6).
55. MAIN, supra note 3, at 140, 169, 186; KENYON, supra note 3; HERBERT J. STORING, WHAT THE
ANTI-FEDERA.ISTS WERE FOR (1981).
Yale Journal of Law and Feminism
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only one major theme. As that unpacking of Antifederalist rhetoric occurs,
Warren's role may become clearer. As indicated later in this article, the
traditional analysis devalues terms used by Warren that do not fit easily into
6
customary concepts, rendering them virtually meaningless.1
Historians' automatic dismissal of her as an Antifederalist, though,
precluded a serious consideration of the full range of what she was trying to
say. The reduction of ideas of Antifederalism to slogans taken with the
reluctance to believe that a woman might have offered her own slant on the
underlying structure of government and goals of society, rendered Warren's
ideas as a stereotype of a dominant male way of thinking in her generation.
III. THE
ADVENT OF WOMEN'S HISTORY
The emergence of women's history should have helped to elucidate the full
nature of Warren's work, yet its agenda did not encourage the complex
untangling of all of Warren's offerings.
In order to understand why this is true it helps to examine some of the
highlights in the development of women's and feminist history. When women's
history first emerged as a field it examined the methodology of traditional
historiography and challenged fundamental assumptions about the authentic
subjects, queries and resources relevant to historical inquiry. 7
A dynamic relationship developed between the rapidly evolving feminist
insights and the concomitant historical endeavor to understand a previously
ignored past-each fed the other. New evidence of the depth and diversity of
women's contributions through the ages spurred even deeper observations
about a new way of thinking. These new ideas incited more historical inquiries
in an ever increasing upward spiral.5"
Historians first focused on what some have called "Compensatory History"
or "Exceptional Women's History." 59 Informed by their new awareness of
the importance of women in history, historians reexamined accomplishments
56. Warren herself recognized that she and her husband were considered Antifederalists, a term she
thought a misnomer. Letter from Mercy Warren to Catharine Macaulay (Dec. 18, 1787) in Letterbook,
supra note 6, at 25.
57. See Berenice A. Carroll, Mary Beard's Woman As Force in History: A Critique, in LIBERATING
WOMEN'S HISTORY, supranote 13, at 26-27. Beard's book, first published in 1946, attempted to establish
a new view of women's role in history, which challenged the myth of female subjugation. MARY R. BEARD,
WOMAN As FORCE IN HISTORY (1946). Carroll criticizes Beard, but recognizes her importance.
58. See, e.g., Scott, History and Difference, 116 DAEDALUS 93 (1987); Hilda L. Smith, Are We
Ready for a Comparative Historiographyof Women, 1989 J. WOMEN'S HIST. 96; WOMEN'S AMERICA:
REFOCUSING THE PAST (Linda Kerber and Jane DeHart Mathews eds., 1982); Elizabeth H. Pleck, Women's
History: Gender as a Category of Historical Analysis, in ORDINARY PEOPLE AND EVERYDAY LIFE:
PERSPECTIVES ON THE NEW SOCIAL HISTORY 51 (James B. Gardner and George Rollie Adams eds., 1983).
59. Gerda Lerner, Placing Women in History: A 1975 Perspective, in LIBERATING WOMEN'S
HISTORY, supra note 13, at 357. Lerner called for the addition of new categories (e.g., sexuality,
reproduction, female consciousness) to the general categories historians consider. She also called for a study
of women's separate spheres, as well as a synthesis of the tensions between men's and women's cultures.
She hoped that by this study a new universal history might be undertaken. Id. at 365.
Contextual ReVision
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of women across historical lines and uncovered an abundance of raw material
for future assessment. Legitimate criticism soon followed that these efforts
focused on privileged white women who were successful by traditional male
standards.' As part of this critique, women of color and others developed a
broader range of compensatory history, uncovering the contributions of women
of color. They created an appreciation for new forms of expression and ways
of participation that had previously been ignored."'
The early "Compensatory History," and the critiques of this work, made
further investigation possible. The exhilaration of discovering active, powerful
women played an enormous role in fostering further historical inquiry as well
as offering support for modern women's appreciation for a part of their
previously buried past. As part of this effort, Mercy Otis Warren's activities
received further attention. A 1953 article by Maude Macdonald Hutcheson in
the William and Mary Quarterly reflected the beginnings of the compensatory
efforts on behalf of Mercy Otis Warren."2 In addition to chronicling the
events of Warren's life and the lives of the men surrounding her, Hutcheson
examines some of the sources less commonly analyzed by the traditional
historians, including Warren's satires.63 Hutcheson also notes Warren's
pamphlet criticizing the proposed United States Constitution, titled
Observations on the New Constitution and on the Foederal and State
Conventions, but fails to address its contents."
In 1958, Katharine Anthony's First Lady of the American Revolution"
60.
See, e.g.,
DEBORAH GRAY WHITE, AR'N'T I A WoMAN? FEMALE SLAVES IN THE PLANTATION
SOUTH (1985); BELLHOOKS, AIN'T I AWOMAN? BLACKWOMEN AND FEMINSM (1981); ALL THE WOMEN
ARE WHITE, ALL THE BLACKS ARE MEN, BUT SOME OF Us ARE BRAVE (Gloria T. Hull et al. eds., 1982);
BETTINA APTHEKER, WOMEN'S LEGACY: ESSAYS ON RACE, SEX, AND CLASS IN AMERICAN HISTORY
(1982); HALIE Q. BROWN, HOMESPUN HEROINES AND OTHER WOMEN OF DISTINCTION (1988); ANGELA
DAVIS, WOMEN, RACE, AND CLASS (1981).
61. See, e.g., SIDNEY KAPLAN & EMMA NOGRADY KAPLAN, THE BLACK PRESENCE IN THE ERA
OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 170-90, 244-78 (1989); UNEQUAL SISTERS, A MULTICULTURAL READER
IN U.S. WOMEN'S HISTORY (Ellen DuBois & Vicki Ruiz eds., 1990); PAULA GIDDINGS, WHEN AND
WHERE I ENTER: THE IMPACT OF BLACK WOMEN ON RACE AND SEX IN AMERICA (1984); BLACK WOMEN
IN NINETEENTH CENTURY AMERICAN LIFE: THEIR WORDS, THEIR THOUGHTS, THEIR FEELINGS (Bert
Lowenberg & Ruth Bogin eds., 1976); ASIAN WOMEN IN TRANSITION (Sylvia A. Chipp & Justin Green
eds., 1980); Lucy Cheng Hirata, Chinese Immigrant Women in Nineteenth-Century California, in WOMEN
OF AMERICA: A HISTORY 223 (Carol Ruth Berkin & Mary Beth Norton eds., 1979); Mary E. Young,
Women, Civilization, and the Indian Question, in CLIO WAS A WOMAN: STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF
AMERICAN WOMEN 98 (Mabel Deutrich & Virginia Purdy eds., 1980); MARTHA COTERA, DIOSA Y
HEMBRA: THE HISTORY AND HERITAGE OF CHICANAS IN THE U.S. (1976).
62. Hutcheson, supra note 34, at 378-402.
63. Id. at 383-89.
64. Id. at 393.
65. A second biography, KATHARINE ANTHONY, FIRST LADY OF THE REVOLUTION: THE LIFE OF
MERCY OTIS WARREN (1958), attempts to analyze Warren's contributions, chiefly her dramas. Much of
the detail of her life is written by reference to the events and men who shared her circle. She cites Elizabeth
Ellet's work on the women of early American history: "Inpoint of influence, Mercy Warren was the most
remarkable woman who lived in the days of the American Revolution ....As a writer she was in advance
of her age .... Seldom has one woman, in any age, acquired such an ascendancy over the strongest by
the mere force of a powerful intellect, and her influence continued to the close of her life." ELIZABETH
ELLET, THE WOMEN OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (1850), cited in Id., at 11. Other attention to Warren
appeared in due time. See, e.g., Feer, Mercy Otis Warren, in NOTABLE AMERICAN WOMEN (E.T. James
etal. eds., 1971); JEAN FRITZ, CAST FOR A REVOLUTION: SOME AMERICAN FRIENDS AND ENEMIES, 1728-
Yale Journal of Law and Feminism
[Vol. 5: 183
attempted to resurrect Warren from oblivion. Although Anthony devotes large
sections to reports of the lives and work of Warren's father, brother and
husband, she continues the efforts of Hutcheson in reviving Warren's works
and ideas. Anthony elucidates Warren's participation in the events preceding
the American Revolution, reporting that prior to the American Revolution
Boston radicals, including Samuel Adams, James Otis, Jr., Mercy's husband
James Warren and others deliberately held meetings at her home so that she
could actively participate in their debates." Anthony suggests that Warren
may in fact have helped to originate the idea for the Committees of
Correspondence, the vital link established among the colonies, although history
generally assigns her husband as the originator of that idea.67
The attention paid to Warren during this initial effort at resurrecting a
"woman worthy" should not be underestimated. Without these efforts little of
the evidence on Warren would have survived for further analysis.
A. Creating a Woman's Sphere
In response to a heightened consciousness of the unique role of women in
society, an innovative generation of scholars forged a new path of historical
and sociological inquiry into "women's culture" and the impact of "women's
spheres of activity" on the social and political world in which women
existed.6" These studies offered critical historical documentation of the ways
in which women developed communication, support and survival skills within
their own spheres of life.
For the most part, Warren's work, when examined through the lens of an
understanding of the "women's sphere," fell squarely within the role assigned
to the "Republican Mother."69 In that role, Warren could be interpreted as
fulfilling her duties to educate the youth, primarily the white, propertied male
youth, in the ideas of private and public virtue so essential for the success of
Republicanism."
At least one scholar analyzed Warren's work as gendered and places her
squarely within the confines of a woman's sphere. Nina Baym recently
1814 (1972).
66. ANTHONY, supra note 65, at 76.
67. Id. at 76-77.
68. See, e.g., NANCY COTT, THE BONDS OF WOMANHOOD, WOMEN'S SPHERE IN NEW ENGLAND
1780-1835 (1977);
LINDA KERBER, WOMEN OF THE REPUBLIC, INTELLECT & IDEOLOGY IN
REVOLUTIONARY AMERICA (1980); MARY BETH NORTON, LIBERTY'S DAUGHTERS: THE REVOLUTIONARY
EXPERIENCE OF AMERICAN WOMEN, 1750-1800 (1980); LINDA NICHOLSON, GENDER AND HISTORY 43-47
(1986).
69. See KERBER, supra note 68, at 235, 269-288 for a description of Republican motherhood.
Essentially, the concept focused on the duty of women to educate the young men to become full members
of the republic. See also NORTON, supra note 68.
70. See, e.g., KERBER, supra note 68. Historians who assessed Warren's role as a historian also
tended to view her work as an effort to educate the future youth in the principles of the "old republicans"
of the American Revolution. See, e.g., COHEN, supra note 44, at 204.
Contextual ReVision
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suggested that Warren's History, and to a lesser extent her poetic tragedies,
reflect a "gendered melodrama" that is consistent with the idea of a woman's
sphere located primarily in the private arena of domestic life.71 According
to Baym,
Warren's two ways of gendering women - as powerless public bodies
and as powerful private minds - can be seen as compatible with each
other and with a doctrine of separate spheres in which the material,
physical, and biological differences between men and women put
women at a truly fatal disadvantage when they are forced into the
man's world.7"
The idea of the separate spheres, while a critical advance in thinking about
women's contributions, forced the historian to categorize thoughts and actions
within a specific mode. At times, this effort created barriers to understanding
overlapping or new ways of assessing the thought of any one individual or
groups, straining for commonalities where they may not exist.
Feminist critics soon appeared to suggest the dangers of isolating or
romanticizing women's culture, calling for a better understanding of the
oppression that created those cultures as well as a more thorough
comprehension of how women understood that oppression in various historical
contexts.
B. Understanding Oppression
Further work in women's history tended to concentrate on the efforts of
women to secure rights, particularly the right of suffrage, already accorded
to men. 73 The analysis emphasized the awareness and support of women in
the struggle for a redefinition of their rights, and an appreciation of the
oppression under which they lived. What role did women play in redressing
the deprivation their rights? How did women view the private sphere to which
they were relegated? How did they justify their transgressions in crossing
beyond their assigned sphere to interact in the public domain?
In addition to the valuable insights gleaned from this work, an inevitable
consequence of these efforts was often the subtle, and not so subtle,
disparagement of those women who failed to assess the world, or their standing
in it, according to this vocabulary of rights. Evaluations of Mercy Otis
71.
Nina Baym, Mercy Otis Warren's Gendered Melodrama of Revolution, 90 S. ATLANTIC Q. 531,
533 (1991).
72. Id. at 551.
73. See, e.g., ELEANOR FLEXNER, A CENTURY OF STRUGGLE: THE WOMEN'S RIGHTS MOVEMENT
IN THE UNITED STATES (1959); AILEEN KRADITOR, THE IDEAS OF THE WOMAN SUFFRAGE MOVEMENT,
1890-1920 (1965); ELLEN DUBOIS, FEMINISM AND SUFFRAGE: THE EMERGENCE OF AN INDEPENDENT
WOMEN'S MOVEMENT IN AMERICA 1848-1869 (1989); NANCY COTT, THE GROUNDING OF MODERN
FEMINISM (1987).
Yale Journal of Law and Feminism
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Warren, who never directly advocated suffrage rights for women, were tainted
by this hidden historiographical disdain.74
Joan Hoff, in her recent book, Law, Gender & Injustice, A Legal History
of U.S. Women, discusses Mercy Otis Warren at some length.75 According
to Hoff, historians may have already given far too much credit to Warren and
to other women of her generation.7' Hoff assesses Warren's intellect and
decides that she was "circumscribed" by her gender "to such a degree that she,
like most of her female characters, acted only within prescribed male
parameters-pushing their limits on occasion but never crossing over into the
public sphere without permission, and then often at their own or their
husband's expense."'
Hoff adopts Clifford Shipton's 1933 description of Warren's plight, which
she deems "sexist but probably accurate."78 Shipton wrote:
She was a woman whose strong character and never-quiet pen made
her more famous than her husband. Untroubled by logic, reason, or
perspective, furious in her prejudices, she poured upon the leading men
of the times a confident and assertive correspondence which caused
many a pitying glance to be cast toward her husband.79
In analyzing the women who lived during the American Revolution and its
immediate aftermath, Hoff focuses on whether their socioeconomic and legal
status, and their perceptions of that status, changed as a result of the war.s'
After studying the existing literature about Warren she concludes that, like
other women of her generation, Warren "did not aspire [nor could be expected
to aspire] to equality with men,""' did not "conceive of a society the
standards of which were not set by male, patriarchal institutions,"82 did not
"envision the modern public system that evolved from the Revolution[,] nor
did she project any public roles for even the most patriotic women. " " Hoff
says that Warren did not believe in education for women, at least in the latter
part of her life," and apologized frequently for leaving her assigned place
74.
(1991).
75.
76.
77.
78.
79.
See, e.g., JOAN HOFF, LAW, GENDER AND INJUSTICE, A LEGAL HISTORY OF U.S. WOMEN
HoFF, supra note 74, at 49-79 (1991).
Id. at 69-70.
Id. at 70.
Id.
Id. (quoting CLIFFoRD K. SHI;TON, 2 SIBLEY'S HARVARD GRADUATES 584 (1933), quoted in
1 ADAMS FAMILY CORRESPONDENCE xiv (L.H. Butterfield et al. eds., 1963)).
80. Id. at 49.
81. Id.at 57.
82. Id. Hoff adds that they should not have been expected to conceive of these institutions in any other
way.
83. Id.at 58.
84. Id. at 55. Contrary to Hoff's interpretation, Warren consistently supported the idea of education
for women. Warren's comment that "education was as unnecessary for a woman as virtue was for a
gentleman" only makes sense if one understands that Warren continually emphasized the primary
19921
Contextual ReVision
in a woman's sphere to write her plays, history and correspondence with men
about political topics.8"
Hoff fails to appreciate Warren's recognition of the context in which she
lived. In fact, Warren recognized too painfully that one had to play the game
in order to be heard or prevail in the end. To her, this was a matter of
survival, not submission or ignorance." Warren accepted the realities of her
present predicament, stating that women needed for the moment to be resigned
to the "appointed subordination" of females to males "for the sake of order
in families" until these "temporary gender distinctions subside and we may be
equally qualified to taste the full draughts of knowledge & [sic] happiness
prepared for the upright of every nation and sex."87 Warren did apologize
for entering a sphere normally relegated to the opposite sex. In her History,
which received the bulk of attention, Warren acknowledged in her introduction
that "It is true there are certain appropriate duties assigned to each sex; and
doubtless it is the more peculiar province of masculine strength... to describe
the bloodstained field, and relate the story of slaughtered armies."'
Warren had no doubt, however, that women could play a role in shaping
the political destiny of their republic:
You see madam I disregard the opinion that women make but
indifferent politicians. It may be true in general, but the present age
has given one example at least to the Contrary, and pray how many
perfect theorists has the world exhibited among the masculine part of
the human species either in ancient or modern times? When the
observations are just and honorary to the heart and character, I think
it very immaterial whether they flow from a female lip in the soft
whispers of private friendship or whether thundered in the Senate in
the bolder language of the other sex.
Nor will 'the one be more influential than the other on the general
conduct of life or the intrigues of statesmen in the Cabinet so long as
importance of "virtue" for the survival of the republic itself. See, e.g., 3 WARREN, supra note 11, at 280,
431.
85. Id. at 67, 70-71, 72, 74.
86. See Letter from Mercy Warren to A Very Young Lady (no date) in Letterbook, supra note 6,
at 111, 114-117. Warren told her niece the same thing. Letter from Mercy Warren to Sally Sevier (Jan.
5, 1780) in Letterbook, supra note 6, at 457-58. These examples are used in the Friedman and Shaffer
article to suggest that Warren buried her private interest in order to preserve the union that seemed
threatened by dissension. Friedman & Shaffer, supra note 35, at 207-13. See also Letter from Mercy
Warren to Rebecca Otis (1776) in Letterbook, supra note 6, at 57-58 (advising her niece that, as an
educated woman, she should address her domestic duties first and with "industry," in order to have time
for more "improving" pursuits).
87. Letter from Mercy Warren to A Very Young Lady (no date) in Letterbook, supra note 6, at 114-5.
88. 1 WARREN, supra note 11, at iv. Warren often included in her public writing and in her
correspondence to men apologies for her boldness in entering upon duties normally reserved for the opposite
sex. Warren suggested that her poetry, which addressed political topics, was "written as the amusement
of solitude, at a period when every active member of society was engaged, either in the field, or the
cabinet, to resist the strong hand of foreign domination." WARREN, supra note 8, at iii.
200
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[Vol. 5: 183
private interest is the spring of action which is indeed too often the
Pole Star that governs mankind from the King to the Cottage.8 9
Warren's private correspondence and her plays are replete with evidence
that she recognized the capacity and potentiality of women and the adverse
environmental conditions which placed them in an inferior position in society.
In her play The Motley Assembly, A Farce, published and widely circulated
in 1779, she begins with the following observation by one of the female
characters:
I mean it as such Mr. Runt;-if your sex are so weak and undiscerning,
as to prefer the fading, short lived, perishable trifle beauty, to the noble
exalted, mental accomplishments, which only are of intrinsic value,
Mr. Runt;-it is fit they should be mortified.-O why has Heaven
permitted our passive sex to be so long deceived and misled by the idle
and groundless opinion of the superior wisdom of the male sex! in
animal strength I grant their superiority;-and I have found some
capable of pleasing;-but few-very few indeed capable of informing
me.
9
0
There can be no question that Mercy Otis Warren appreciated the
immensity of the obstacles she faced daily as a result of her gender. Women's
understanding of their own oppression is an important area of inquiry.
However, when it is the only mode of inquiry, we are judging the women of
history by our own, modern standards. This is not meant to be a criticism of
Joan Hoff, who does attempt to treat Warren seriously. However, it is
indicative of the barriers that can be created to a further understanding of
Warren's work.
Another scholar, Judith Markowitz, published an assessment of Warren's
work which further advanced the discovery of the importance of Warren's
contributions.9 Markowitz emphasized the lack of attention various historical
treatments have shown Warren's thought. Markowitz also attempted to
demonstrate that Warren was not only radical but feminist as well. She
determined that "[Warren's] analyses of war, her concern for the Native
89. Letter from Mercy Warren to Catharine Macaulay [Graham] (Dec. 29, 1774) in Letterbook, supra
note 6, at 6-7. Warren is referring to Macaulay as the "one example." Hoff interprets this quote to be "at
worst referring to a 'pillow talk' type of politics, or at best to a 'power-behind-the-scenes' political role
for her sex." Hoff, supra note 74, at 64. This again attempts to use a modem context to interpret her
meaning. Warren often "whispered" to her friends when she knew she could not make a public statement.
In her letter to Catharine Macaulay in December 1787 she "whispers" that she is the author of the pamphlet
critiquing the proposed Constitution. Letter from Mercy Warren to Catharine Macaulay (Dec. 18, 1787)
in Letterbook, supra note 6, at 25-26.
90. Mercy Warren, The Motley Assembly, A Farce (1779), microformed on Early American Imprints,
1639-1800, at 16668 (Readex Microprint Corp.).
91. Judith Markowitz, Radical and Feminist:Mercy Otis Warren and the Historiographers,4 PEACE
& CHANGE 10 (Spring 1977).
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American, and her warnings against an established military and aristocracy
based on wealth commend particularly to the attention of those concerned with
problems of war and peace. "92 Markowitz looked briefly at Warren's History
and at her Observations on the New Constitution, suggesting that
[blecause women are viewed, a priori, as apolitical and even
ahistorical, emphasizing Warren's feminism, or using her gender to
explain her ideas, has tended in the past to obscure her political and
historical significance. Defining Warren first as a woman had allowed
historians to trivialize and obscure her political thought: she is thus
seen as a woman who happens to write history rather than as an
historian and ideologue who happens to be a woman. Hopefully,
historians will no longer split exceptional women into schizophrenic
beings and Warren can be viewed as a whole person, a nascent feminist
and a revolutionary republican.9 3
Markowitz was one of the first to suggest that a more complex study of
Warren was necessary to rectify the historiographical mistreatments and neglect
of Warren's thought.
C. Adding a New Dimension
Gerda Lerner, an early and innovative contributor to the understanding of
women's history, offered a useful metaphor to demonstrate the need for
interactive historiographical work about women:
The computer shows us a picture of a triangle (two-dimensional). Still
holding that image, the triangle moves in space and is transformed into
a pyramid (three-dimensional). Now the pyramid moves in space
creating a curve (the fourth dimension), while still holding the image
of the pyramid and the triangle. We see all four dimensions at once,
losing none of them, but seeing them also in their true relation to one
another.
She suggested that
[s]eeing as we have seen, in patriarchal terms, is two-dimensional.
'Adding women' to the patriarchal framework makes it threedimensional. But only when the third dimension is fully integrated and
moves with the whole, only when women's vision is equal with men's
vision, do we perceive the true relations of the whole and the inner
92.
93.
Id. at 10.
I at 19.
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connectedness of the parts. 94
We may need more dimensions. We certainly need to add an understanding
of how oppression worked to relegate women to their own spheres and how
they responded to this oppression by utilizing the resources at their disposal
to create their own culture. We need to add an understanding of how women
began to understand their oppression through the development of
communication and support networks within that culture. In order to give these
women the full assessment they deserve, we also need to evaluate them within
the context of their era. This evaluation has much to offer our own generation.
When a woman's vision is taken as seriously as that of her male
counterpart, when it is interpreted within its own context, a context which we
have examined and learned to value with the benefit of feminist insight, an
alternative voice will be heard, a voice articulating different priorities and
goals for society. This voice may clash with conventional wisdom, it may be
labelled hopelessly idealistic or impracticable, but it forces us to see history
from a different perspective. This voice may even speak to current dilemmas.
IV. A REEVALUATION OF WARREN'S WORK
When I first studied Mercy Otis Warren's work-in her correspondence,
plays, poems, and history-her references to a "mediocratic" society, "equal
liberty," "equal rights," and the concerns of "savages," "blacks," "women,"
and "religious dissenters" fascinated me. After examining her work as a
whole, I realized that these references were not mere asides but a part of
Warren's whole vision for the new republic.
In order to make her concerns with these ideas fit within the conventional
categories employed to assess her era, conventional theorists working within
the "Antifederalist" or "Classical Republican" traditions, or even within the
emerging "Liberal" tradition, have devalued and deemphasized the import of
Warren's use of the terms "mediocratic" and "equal liberty" and have not
taken seriously her identification of the plight of those kept from less than full
membership in the society. Singling out these terms for attention and valuing
them as important parts of a coherent whole alters their traditional
characterizations.
A. Taking Mediocrity and Equal Liberty Seriously
Warren considered herself to be a "Republican" engaged in preserving the
principles and ideals fought over during the American Revolution.9" She
understood only too well the system of government proposed by the new
LERNER, supra note 14, at 12.
95. See Letter from Mercy Warren to John Adams (Mar. 1776) in Letterbook, supra note 6, at 162.
94.
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Constitution. She recognized the dangers of emphasizing private interest as a
societal priority and sought to develop mechanisms to ameliorate the
destructive capacity of such an emphasis. She recommended an alternative
vision for society that prioritized "mediocrity," a middle ground, where
individual wealth accumulation was not the focus. Instead, the societal priority
would be the improvement of the individual for the benefit of the community
at large. Tolerance, education, fair distribution of assets, participation, and
representation in government all played critical roles in simultaneously
preserving the goals of society and maintaining the integrity of the individual.
Warren did not write a treatise entitled "Thoughts on Government and
Mediocrity." Such a work would have been handy. It also would certainly have
made historians sit up and take notice. Instead, it is only through carefully
sifting through, reading, and thinking about Warren's approach that her
emphasis on mediocrity surfaces. When attention is paid to the references and
context of her perspective and analysis, the importance of Warren's use of
mediocrity as a model for a new society becomes clear.
Warren understood the dangers of unbridled self-interest and sought to send
society's commitment along a different route. Rather than espousing a view
mired in the classical republicanism of the past, Warren envisioned a future
fraught with the possibility of brilliant success. Motivated by a disgust for the
repeated degeneration of republics through the ages as a result of corruption
and greed, Warren aimed to eliminate the relevance of individual profit for
its own sake as a societal goal.
References to a society which prioritized mediocrity are common
throughout Warren's work. In setting forth the introduction to her History, she
observed,
Many who first stepped forth in vindication of the rights of human
nature are forgotten, and the causes which involved the thirteen
colonies in confusion and blood are scarcely known, amidst the rage
of accumulation and the taste for expensive pleasures that have since
prevailed; a taste that has abolished that mediocrity which once
satisfied, and that contentment which long smiled in every
countenance. 96
She also wrote admiringly of the early Puritan community:
[once the settlers overcame their religious bigotry], a spirit of candor
and forbearance every where took place. They seemed, previous to the
rupture with Britain, to have acquired that just and happy medium
between the ferocity of a state of nature, and those high stages of
civilization and refinement, that at once corrupt the heart and sap the
96. 1 WARREN, HisTORy, supra note 11, at 4.
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foundation of happiness.97
On April 27, 1785, Warren wrote to John Adams that
[a]n avidity for Pleasure has increased with our Freedom and a thirst
of acquisition for its support pushes to the most dangerous
Experiments. And though sensible it is owing to the Perversion of
Reason, a Corruption of Taste and the Cravings of Artificial Necessity
which causes the Restless pursuit of objects seldom attainable. Yet
Neither the Reasonings of the Philosopher nor the maxims of Religion
will bring back to that Mediocrity which ought to bound the wishes of
Man, Either the people or the individual who has tasted the more
Refined and Elegant accommodations of life.98
Warren considered "ambition and avarice" to be "the leading springs which
generally actuate the restless mind."" She blamed these "primary sources
of corruption" for "all the rapine and confusion, the depredation and ruin, that
have spread distress over the face of the earth from the days of Nimrod to
Cesar, and from Cesar to an arbitrary prince of the house of Brunswick."" 0
Where society encouraged ambition and avarice, the republic was doomed
and the masses would succumb to the rule of tyrants.' 01 Warren's concern
stems from her belief that the human character is frail and possesses the
possibility either for much good or for much evil:
The study of the human character opens at once a beautiful and
deformed picture of the soul. We there find a noble principle implanted
in the nature of man, that pants for distinction. This principle operates
in every bosom, and when kept under the control of reason, and the
influence of humanity, it produces the most benevolent effects."o
Yet, she warned that "when the checks of conscience are thrown aside, or the
moral sense weakened by the sudden acquisition of wealth or power, humanity
is obscured, and if a favorable coincidence of circumstances permits, this love
of distinction often exhibits the most mortifying instances of profligacy,
tyranny, and the wanton exercise of arbitrary sway."13 Thus, unlike her
97. 1WARREN, HISTORY, supra note 11, at 20-21. Warren also criticized the slave-holding settlements
in the South, which did not have this understanding of mediocrity. Id. at 21-23.
98. Letter from Mercy Warren to John Adams (Apr. 27, 1785), in 2 WARREN-ADAMS LETTERS,
supra note 6, at 252.
99. 1 WARREN, HISTORY, supra note 11, at 2.
100. Id. The "prince of Brunswick" is a reference to George III and the decadence and corruption
of the British preceding the American Revolution.
101. See generally Letter from Mercy Warren to Catharine Macaulay (Dec. 29, 1774), in Letterbook,
supra note 6, at 30.
102. 1 WARREN, HISTORY, supra note 11, at 2.
103. Id.
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Calvinistic forbears, Warren refused to believe in predestiny for the human
soul, but depended in large part on the influences of "humanity" as the
artifices that "check conscience" and guide people toward benevolence and the
interests of humanity itself. 0
After the war, Warren became alarmed that the societal structure critical
to the survival of the new republic appeared ready to fall apart. She wrote of
her dismay to Catharine Macaulay, the British historian:
You will doubtless be surprized when I tell you that republicanism, the
Idol of some men, and independence, the glory of all are nearly
dwindled into theory. The ideas of the first are defaced by a spirit of
anarchy and the latter almost annihilated by the views of private
ambition and a rage for the accumulation of wealth by a kind of public
gambling, instead of private industry. 5
Warren's attack on avarice and greed motivated her to advocate a society
based on mediocrity. While aristocracy of wealth, rank, or power posed the
greatest threat to the republicanism of her day, mediocrity was its hope.
Warren's concern that avarice was the root of all threat to republics
permeates her plays and poetry. Her play, The Group, underscores the real
danger uncontrolled greed poses to the fabric of government."
In her Observationson the New Constitutionand on the Foederaland State
Conventions, Warren reaffirmed these concerns:
On these shores freedom has planted her standard... ; and here every
uncorrupted American yet hopes to see it supported by the vigour, the
justice, the wisdom and unanimity of the people, in spite of the deeplaid plots, the secret intrigues, or the bold effrontery of those interested
and avaricious adventurers for place, who intoxicated with the ideas
of distinction and preferment have prostrated every worthy principle
beneath the shrine of ambition. 107
She characterized the purposes of government in the following manner:
104. The teachings of the Protestant Reformation, and of Calvinism in particular, emphasized
"predestiny"-that the soul was either marked for salvation or damnation from its inception. The early
Puritan church carried on the practice of identifying "saints"-those who were predestined for salvation
as the members of the church. Cheryl Oreovicz, one of the few commentators to discuss the influence of
religion on Mercy Otis Warren's views, has suggested that Warren "offered a vibrant re-reading of the
bases of American Calvinism as the key to America's salvation," and that she provided "a vision of a
Calvinist republican." Cheryl Oreovicz, Mercy Warren and "Freedom'sGenius," U. MISS. STUD. ENG.,
Aug. 1987, at 215, 218.
105. Letter from Mercy Warren to Catharine Macaulay (Aug. 2, 1787) in Letterbook, supra note
6, at 22, 23.
106. See generally WARREN, THE GROUp, supra note 9.
107. WARREN, OBSERVATIONS, supra note 5, at 5.
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All writers on government agree, and the feelings of the human mind
witness the truth of these political axioms, that man is born free and
possessed of certain unalienable rights-that government is instituted
for the protection, safety and happiness of the people, and not for the
profit, honour, or private interest of any man, family, or class of men
108
The role of government was not to impose a specific moral view, but to
create the conditions within which individual and public morality could thrive.
In this sense, government does not take the ultimate responsibility away from
the people to define the public good or morality but encourages the
deliberations that lead to that result. In the aim of promoting the public
welfare, a good republican government should develop mechanisms to
encourage and educate the citizenry to exercise self-restraint with regard to
acting in pure self-interest. As she told John Adams,
I have long been an admirer of a republican government, and was
convinced, even before I saw the advantages delineated in so clear and
concise a manner by your pen;-that if established on the genuine
principles of equal liberty,-it, was aform productive of many excellent
qualities, and heroic virtues in human nature-which often lie dormant
for want of opportunities for exertion. 9
Although a pragmatist in facing the world as she knew it, Warren dared
to assert a vision of the society that blended religious notions of benevolence
and a divine plan for universal happiness and human progress with a deepseated belief in human capacity to change. Although human nature exhibited
a strong tendency toward selfish acquisitiveness, humans possessed the ability
to exercise control over their lives and the ability to achieve dignity through
the use of reason, benevolence, and tolerance.
She limited her teleological framework to one which considered God's
interest in assuring human happiness, and to a firm conviction that everything
humans eventually accomplished somehow comported with this divine plan.
Most of the responsibility for earthly action, however, Warren placed within
human control. Religion, while a useful "cement" for society, ° had no
place in civil government.
B. Survival of Community and the Bill of Rights
During the ratification debates in the states, Warren operated behind the
108.
109.
Id at 6.
Letter from Mercy Warren to John Adams (Mar. 1776) in Letterbook, supra note 6, at 163.
110. 1 WARREN, HismoRy, supra note 11, at 17-18.
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scenes in opposition to the proposed Constitution as drafted, because, among
other reasons, it lacked a Bill of Rights."' How could one who advocated
a community-based norm for society argue so vehemently against a
Constitution that failed to delineate a Bill of Rights? There are several
explanations of Warren's actions that are consistent with Warren's work.
The rights that Warren fought for are rights that are integrally tied to her
view of the survival of the republic. Warren's rights were those that helped
the individual make the republic a success. This stems from her visions of
community and of the individual and from her vision of the individual's and
the community's reciprocal responsibilities.
Freedom of the press and freedom of conscience were essential to Warren's
concept of the republican community. For Warren, a community could not
survive as a republic without assurance that the individual's exercise of
freedom of conscience or freedom of the press would be protected. The right
to a jury was for Warren, just as much an important educational tool for
community members, and a check on governmental authority, as it was a
protection for the accused.
C. Equal Liberty and Equal Rights
Liberty, tempered by equality, was an essential element of Warren's
theory. Although she prized liberty, Warren placed it within a context of
responsibility to community, modifying the concept to become that of "equal
liberty." Under Warren's approach, the structures and responsibilities of
government were crucial to preserving liberty and virtue.
Warren spoke of the equal qualifications and capacities for achievement
of women and men in her private correspondence as well as in her public
work." 2 She employed the term "equal liberty" in a 1775 letter to John
Adams,
I am more and more convinced, of the propensity in human nature to
tyrannize over their fellow men:-and were it not for the few-the very
few, disinterested and good men, who dare venture to stem the tide of
power, when it grows wanton and overbearing, the ideas of native
freedom, and the equal liberty of man, would long e'er this have been
banished the western hemisphere.'
111. See generally Charles Warren, supra note 5, at 143-164.
112. For example, in her HISTORY, Warren wrote of the "spirit of more equal liberty." 1 WARREN,
HISTORY, supra note 11, at 21-22. See also, Letter from Mercy Warren to A Very Young Lady (no date),
in Letterbook, supra note 6, at 114-115; Letter from Mercy Warren to John Adams (Oct. 1775), in
Letterbook, supra note 6, at 157; Letter from Mercy Warren to John Adams (Mar. 1776), in Letterbook,
supra note 6, at 163.
113. Letter from Mercy Warren to John Adams (Oct. 1775), in Letterbook, supra note 6, at 157.
208
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When opposing the proposed Constitution Warren also used the phrases
"equal rights" and "equal participation."14 By these terms she meant to
temper liberty with responsibilities to others and the community at large. She
simply did not believe in liberty for its own sake. Unbridled liberty, liberty
that swallowed up the interests of others, was the bane of society.
Even before the new Constitution emerged from the Philadelphia
Convention in 1787, Warren feared an emphasis on a strong national
government unaccompanied by an equal emphasis on the freedoms and
equalities necessary for its survival:
[T]he spirit of intrique [sic] is matured in this country-even among
the politicians of yesterday. As sample of this truth may be exhibited
in the future establishments of America, and the systems of policy that
may be adopted by the busy genius's [sic] now plodding over untrodden
ground and who are more engaged in the fabrication of a strong
government than attentive to the ease freedom and equal rights of
5
man."
She believed in a fabric which supported liberty, one that depended on the
institutional guarantees to, as well as limitations on, the individual. 1 6 She
acknowledged that liberty had its obligations, placing the rights of life, liberty,
and property within their community context. For example, in her
Observations she noted "[tihat the origin of all power is in the people" and
they may not only "check the creatures of their own creation" but also "guard
the life, liberty, and property of the community ....
7
Warren based her vision for society on the improvement of conditions for
humanity at large. Within that vision she included a concern for those excluded
114. WARREN, OBSERVATIONS, supra note 5, at 6, 8. Although originals are available in rare book
rooms of several libraries, pages here are cited to the more generally available reprint in FORD, supra note
6. See also, 1 WARREN, HISTORY, supra note 11, at 40.
Warren wrote about the proposed Constitution and its drafters:
And it is with inexpressible anxiety, that many of the best friends to the Union of the States to the peaceable and equal participation of the rights of nature, and to the glory and dignity of
this country, behold the insidious arts, and the strenuous efforts of the partisans of arbitrary
power, by their vague definitions of the best established truths, endeavoring to envelop the mind
in darkness the concomitant of slavery.
WARREN, OBSERVATIONS, supra note 5, at 6.
115. Letter from Mercy Otis Warren to Catharine Macaulay (Aug. 2, 1787), in Letterbook, supra
note 6, at 22-23.
116. WARREN, OBSERVATIONS supra note 5, at 21.
Warren wrote:
[America] acquired the liberty of framing her own laws, choosing her own magistrates, and
adopting manners and modes of government the most favourable to the freedom and happiness
of society. But how little have we availed ourselves of these superior advantages: The glorious
fabric of liberty, successfully reared with so much labour and assiduity totters to the foundation,
and may be blown away as the bubble of fancy by the rude breath of military combinations, and
the politicians of yesterday.
Id.
117. Id. at 6.
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by classical republican and emerging liberal theories. Throughout her life,
Warren showed concern for the welfare of African-Americans, women,
religious dissenters, the non-propertied, and Native Americans. She believed
in equality of all human beings at birth and sought to ensure equality of
conditions whenever possible in the new society. She wrote that "[d]emocratic
principles are the result of equality of condition. A superfluity of wealth, and
a train of domestic slaves, naturally banish a sense of general liberty, and
nourish the seeds of that kind of independence that usually terminates in
aristocracy. "118
Slavery itself was an anathema to her. She understood that an equitable
distribution of knowledge and property, more evident in the New England
colonies, encouraged a "spirit of more equal liberty. "119 Her disdain for the
articulations of liberty emanating from the South emerged throughout her
writing: "[w]herever slavery is encouraged, there are among the free
inhabitants very high ideas of liberty, though not so much from a sense of the
common rights of man, as from their own feelings of superiority.""'
Her belief in equality led to a concern for the plight of the Native American
"savages" (as she called them), and she challenged the legitimacy of westward
expansion in light of their "prior right to the inheritance."121 She stressed
the fundamental equality of Native Americans, writing:
118. 1 WARREN, HISTORY, supra note 11, at 22.
119. Id. at 21.
120. Id. at 22. Nina Baym recently suggested that Warren did not really care much about the condition
of Blacks in Revolutionary America. She stated:
Nor, it may be added, is she any more proleptically enlightened about American blacks. She
writes, absolutely without irony, that Lord Dunsmore, the Royal Governor of Virginia, "had the
inhumanity early to intimate his designs if opposition ran high, to declare freedom to the blacks,
and on any appearance of hostile resistance to the king's authority, to arm them against their
masters."
Baym, supra note 71, at 546-47 (quoting 1 WARREN, HISTORY, supra note 11, at 110). Baym makes no
attempt to rationalize this with Warren's earlier references in the HISTORY to the idea of slavery. After
a careful reading of the section referred to by Baym, it seems to me that Warren is reflecting her basic
reaction to the actions of both Governor Dunsmore and other southern crown officials to use emancipation
as a threat of violence to control the white American patriots. She did not choose to address her total
opposition to slavery at this particular point in the HISTORY. Warren shared the firm convictions of her
brother, James Otis, Jr. who wrote in 1764 that "The colonists are by the law of nature freeborn, as indeed
all men are, white or black .... Does it follow that't is right to enslave a man because he is black? Will
short curled hair like wool, instead of Christian hair, as't is called by those whose hearts are as hard as
the nether millstone, help the argument?" JAMES OTIS, RIGHTS OF THE BRITISH COLONIES ASSERTED AND
PROVED 29 (1764), reprinted in BERNARD BAILYN, PAMPHLETS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 439
(1961).
121. 3 WARREN, HISTORY, supra note 11, at 314. Warren suggested that a "Chinese Wall" should
have been
stretched along the Appalachian ridges, that might have kept the nations within the boundaries
of nature. This would have prevented the incalculable loss of life and property, and have checked
the lust of territory, wealth, and that ambition which has poured out streams of innocent blood
on the forlorn mountains. The lives of our young heroes were too rich a price for the purchase
of the acres of the savages, even could the nations be extinguished, who certainly have a prior
right to the inheritance: this is a theme on which some future historians may more copiously
descant.
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Nature has been equal in its operations, with regard to the whole
human species. There is no difference in the moral or intellectual
capacity of nations, but what arises from adventitious circumstances,
that give some a more early and rapid improvement in civilization than
others. '
Despite her own strong, private religious beliefs, Warren also advocated
tolerance for religious dissenters. The persecution of the Quakers in early New
England settlements, she wrote, could "never be justified either by the
principles of policy or humanity.""
D. Specific Objections to the ProposedConstitution
Warren's concern about the role of representation in guaranteeing equal
liberty is evident in her objections to the proposed Constitution. She believed
that in order to preserve the ideal of equal representation, representatives
should be elected every year:
It will be allowed by every one that the fundamental principle of a free
government is the equal representation of a free people
. . . . And when society has thus deputed a certain number of their
equals to take care of their personal rights, and the interest of the
whole community, it must be considered that responsibility is the great
security of integrity and honour; and that annual election is the basis
of responsibility .... 124
A "frequent return to the bar of their Constituents," she argued, "is the
strongest check against the corruptions to which men are liable."" She
believed that a further benefit of rotation in office for public officials was that
service in the government fostered the education and participation of members
122. 2 WARREN, HISTORY, supra note 11, at 123. Warren did not see any problem, however, with
"civilizing" the "savages." She wrote in this same passage:
The ideas of some Europeans as well as Americans, that the rude tribes of savages cannot be
civilized by the kind and humane endeavors of their neighbours, is absurd and unfounded. What
were once the ancestors of the most refined and polite modem nations, but rude, ignorant
savages, inured to all the barbarous customs and habits of present existing tribes? . . . This
gradual rise from the rude stages of nature to the highest pitch of refinement, may be traced by
the historian, the philosopher, and the naturalist, sufficiently to obviate all objections against the
strongest efforts, to instruct and civilize the swarms of men in the American wilds, whose only
natural apparent distinction, is a copper-colored skin. When the present war ceases to rage, it
is hoped that humanity will teach Americans of a fairer complexion, to use the most strenuous
efforts to instruct them in arts, manufactures, morals, and religion, instead of aiming at their
extermination.
Id. at 122-23.
123. 1 WARREN, HISTORY, supra note 11, at 13.
124. WARREN, OBSERVATIONS, supra note 5, at 8.
125. Id. at 8.
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of the community and kept officials in touch with their communities.1 26
The rights that Warren most wanted to include in a Bill of Rights were
those that aided the survival of a republic by keeping individuals free and by
supporting the institutions that helped them to exercise that freedom. Thus, she
valued "security in the profered [sic] system, either for the rights of conscience
or the liberty of the Press" as a guarantee against "arbitrary power" and the
silencing of "the most decent remonstrances of an injured and oppressed
people. "127
Warren recognized that jury trials acted as a check on government, and
she traced the right to them back to "our Saxon ancestors." She suggested that
the elimination of the right to a jury trial in civil cases was motivated by "fear
of inquisition for unaccounted thousands of public monies" or "from the
apprehension some future delinquent possessed of more power than integrity,
may be called to a trial by his peers in the hour of investigation." 12S
Without recognizing it as such, Warren perched on the threshold of liberalism
and sensed its dangers. Instead of institutionalizing individual tendencies
toward self-interest, she emphasized mutual respect and interest in the progress
of humanity as a whole, without devaluing the integrity or diversity of
individuals.
Mediocrity offered an alternative vision of society from either the classical
republican or the emerging liberal one. Although her mediocratic society
evolved from the republican tradition, particularly from the early dissidents
of the Puritan Revolution of the mid-1600s, Warren recognized the
impossibility and the inadvisability of maintaining a homogeneous society
where all shared the same interests. She believed that the existence of different
opinions would encourage deliberation and lead to a common understanding
of community needs. 129
The government's role in tolerating individual conscience shaped Warren's
concept of republicanism:
It is rational to believe that the benevolent Author of nature designed
universal happiness as the basis of his works. Nor is it unphilosophical
to suppose the difference in human sentiment, and the variety of
opinions among mankind, may conduce to this end. They may be
permitted, in order to improve the faculty of thinking, to draw out the
powers of the mind, to exercise the principles of candor, and learn us
to wait, in a becoming manner, the full disclosure of the system of
divine government. Thus, probably, the variety in the formation of the
human soul may appear to be such, as to have rendered it impossible
126. Id. at 11.
127. Id. at 9.
128. Id. at 10.
129.
1 WARREN, HISTORY, supra note 11, at 16.
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for mankind to think exactly in the same channel. The contemplative
and liberal minded man must, therefore, blush for the weakness of his
own species, when he sees any of them endeavouring to circumscribe
the limits of virtue and happiness within his own contracted sphere, too
often darkened [by] superstition and bigotry.O30
Warren also feared the disengagement of people from the activities of selfgovernment."' She matured during the intense public engagement with
political affairs and activities of self-governance of the revolutionary era. She
admired the willingness of the Massachusetts citizenry to govern themselves
after the British dissolved their assembly during the years prior to revolution,
and she wrote, "Nothing but the Virtue of this people prevents our feeling
daily the dreadful consequences of anarchy in the extreme."' 32She valued
the deliberative and educational participation by members of society in all
forms of community, state, and national governance.
Warren insisted on the connection between members of society and
government, emphasizing the relationship between private and public virtue,
and cautioning against isolating the private sphere from the public. Her
argument laid a foundation for the future inclusion of underrepresented groups
in participatory governance. This can be contrasted with the insistence on
negative liberties emerging in federalist thought, which necessarily created a
private sphere in which white male power holders could protect themselves
and their "property" against governmental infringement and which imprisoned
all women and slaves as objects of their private power domain. The standard
treatments of 18th-century American republicanism scarcely deal with these
ideas for their own intrinsic worth. References to "equal liberty" or
"mediocrity" are brief and obtuse; for the most part, they are duly repeated
in quotations and noted as terms located in their 18th-century context without
much effort to decipher possible implications of their use. "Mediocrity" is
lumped with classical republican dreams of an ideal republic, dreams seen as
pathetically out of touch with, or ignorant of, the emerging liberal scheme.
E. Homogeneity Versus Heterogeneity
Warren's views of community and republic raise significant questions about
traditional conceptions of Antifederalist objections to the Constitution. The
typical historical treatment suggested that Antifederalists relied on the classical
republican view that no republic could survive unless it existed in a small
homogeneous community.' 33 Only those who shared the same interests and
130. Id. at 16-17.
131. WARREN, OBSERVATIONS, supra note 5, at 6.
132. Letter from Mercy Otis Warren to Catharine Macaulay (Dec. 29, 1774), in Letterbook, supra
note 6, at 13.
133. See, e.g.,
KENYON,
supra note 3; MAIN,supra note 3; STORING, supra note 55.
Contextual ReVision
19921
goals and could participate in a discourse on governmental affairs could hope
to survive as a republic. For this reason Antifederalists opposed a Constitution
that created both a large national government with diverse interests and a
representative government that could not hope to provide for the interests of
local communities.
Warren, too, objected in her Observations that a geographically large
republic could not survive.' 34 But Warren's analysis, when considered as a
cohesive whole, incorporated support for a strong, energetic national
government and a belief that even small communities represented a
heterogeneous mix of interests that could not be said to have one voice. 3 '
Warren believed in the strength of that heterogeneity: she hoped that people
with diverse interests, empowered by education, tolerant of each other, and
joined together in vigorous debate, could arrive at the shared interests of the
whole community. 3 '
Warren was concerned about the geographically large republic, not because
of a lack of homogeneity or opportunity for direct discourse, but because of
the lack of governmental structures that encouraged reciprocal responsibilities
among individuals, their communities and the government.
V. BENEFITTING FROM THE GAINS OF FEMINIST THEORY
It is fascinating to analogize Warren's vision to modern alternative feminist
visions. Both challenge the underlying values of their societies. Certainly, that
is yet another dimension to consider when analyzing the contributions of
women in our history. Modern and postmodern feminist theories offer new
tools for reconsidering, deconstructing, and rebuilding our comprehension of
18th-century ideas. These tools should not marshall evidence into a 20thcentury mold, rather they should provide us with new questions. For example,
does the ethic of care identified by modern feminist theory' 37 provide
different ways of understanding what Warren's "mediocrity" meant? This is
different from asking whether Warren understood the "ethic of care."
The perspective of one who understands the modern world in feminist
theoretical terms creates a new microscopic, or even macroscopic, lens with
which to study existing evidence. As our microscopes improve, so too may
the results. Certainly they may help the historian notice an emphasis, a mode
of conceptualization, a priority that may have been neglected by past
methodologies. It may help to put the pieces of the puzzle back together in an
unconventional manner, one that enriches the debate about historical
134. See WARREN, OBSERVATIONS, supra note 5, at 12.
135. 1 WARREN, HISTORY, supra note 11, at 16-17.
136. See supra pp. 219-220.
137. See, e.g., CAROL GILGAN, INA DIFFERENT VOICE: PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY AND WOMEN'S
DEVELOPMENT (1982); NANCY CHODOROW, THE REPRODUCTION OF MOTHERING: PSYCHOANALYSIS AND
THE SOCIOLOGY OF GENDER (1978).
Yale Journal of Law and Feminism
[Vol. 5: 183
interpretation.
Critical race theorists show that categorizing either by race or sex creates
artificial understandings of Black women, and their lessons help us understand
how Mercy Otis Warren operated on many different levels in society. Each
of her roles overlapped and informed the others, and much can be learned
from the various intersections and their impact on each "independent" role or
function. A study of one such role, without full comprehension of all of them,
misses the richness of her offering. The studies of Warren that concentrate
solely on her role as a historian, or as a poet, or as a woman operating within
her own sphere, or as a misplaced feminist, fail to consider the depth of the
life and thought of this woman in history.
The purpose of this essay has not been to lay out Mercy Otis Warren's full
vision for society. Certainly, my interpretations are not the final word, nor are
they intended to be. By using the example of Warren's work, I hope, rather,
to encourage historians to view different dimensions of women's work and
thought in context. Only then will we understand the scope of women's
contributions to history as distinct from their appreciation of the limitations
of the society in which they operated. Each stage of the development of
"herstoryography" merits our full attention, with careful thought to the way
in which all dimensions exist and relate one to the other, and with caution for
the possible ways we may inadvertently create our own barriers to that which
we most wish to discover.
For example, in recent years feminist political theory has challenged core
assumptions of liberalism.138 Fascinating work revealing the gender bias
implicit in ideas of consent and individualism may transform liberal theory into
a vulnerable "house of cards." For example, Nancy Hirschman suggests that
basic human relations are not created by autonomous individuals exercising
free choice based solely on self-interest. Rather, they arise from different types
of obligations, including involuntary relations like those in the family.139
Such an understanding of political theory can lead to a more accurate
assessment of women's voices in the past as well as the present, one that is
true to their historical context.
What happened to Mercy Otis Warren during the merger of women's history
and feminist theory illustrates the need to step back and reexamine our own
efforts to interpret women's history. Warren herself is not the important focus
of this examination-the point I want to advance here is that because of the
emphasis on particularized types of inquiry, we may be ignoring other ways
of assessing the contribution of the women of our past.
138. See, e.g., ZI.AH EISENSTEIN, THE RADICAL FUTURE OF LIBERAL FEMIISM (1981); JEAN
BETHKE ELSHTAIN, PUBLIC MAN, PRIVATE WOMAN (1981); ALISON JAGGAR, FEMINIST POLrnIcs AND
HUMAN NATURE (1983); LINDA NICHOLSON, GENDER AND HISTORY (1986); SUSAN MOLLER OKIN,
WOMEN IN WESTERN POLITICAL THOUGHT (1979).
139.
(1992).
NANCY J. HImSCHMAN, RETHINKING OBLIGATION: A FEMINIST METHOD FOR POLITICALTHEORY
1992]
Contextual ReVision
215
Because of our interest in how women of the past understood and
responded to oppression, there has been less emphasis on challenging the
traditional rendition of Warren's social, political and moral vision. We have
been willing to accept the standard assessment of her theories and concentrate
on her standing in the rankings of prefeminists. We devalue women's visions
by failing to take their views seriously.
In our efforts at rediscovering herstory, as a story of feminism or as a sign
of early feminism, we may be unconsciously building barriers against the
possibilities of new understandings of the past contributions of women in
history. By continuously contrasting past women's efforts with modern feminist
expectations, just as traditional historians often contrasted women's activities
with male institutional models of success, we are in danger of creating our own
dichotomy in which we assume dominance and they, the women of the past,
necessarily become our victims. Because they are doomed to fail by our
standards, we note their valiant efforts and move on, patting ourselves on the
back for uncovering these brave but constrained souls, and missing the
relevance their thought had for their struggles and, indeed, for our own.